Bet and Todd stared at his laptop where it perched on Bet’s desk. The computer spat out matches for the fingerprints Todd uploaded. Seeley’s were on the truck and in the cave. The only prints from the cave and the bat gate that came back with a match to anything were from Rob and Dale. This left Todd with two sets of fingerprints that didn’t come back with a match. One set on the coffee cup in the truck, and one from the cave.
“Sorry, Bet,” Todd said, his voice returned to its usual dirgelike tone. “I really thought I might have something for you.”
Bet shrugged. Not much they could do about the fact that the last two sets of prints weren’t registered in the most common databases. The prints on the coffee cup were most likely Emma’s, so they wouldn’t help them identify the third person involved. As for the strange set from inside the cave, Bet wasn’t going to hold her breath.
“What about the print off the flashlight?” Bet asked.
“Still searching. Nothing came up right away, so not someone with a police record. I put it through a few other databases, which will take longer to run. I’ll do the same with these two sets.”
Bet helped Todd carry the rest of his equipment out to his van while they let his laptop continue to scan. Todd went to get a cup of coffee before he started his long trek back down to E’burg. A dark-blue minivan pulled up in front of the station. A middle-aged man drove, with a woman in the passenger seat and a teenage girl in the back.
“Excuse me,” the woman called from the passenger window. “Are you Sheriff Rivers?”
Bet introduced herself, guessing correctly this would be the Hunters. They’d positively identified their daughter in the morgue. Now they came to Bet wanting answers. She’d tried to encourage them over the phone to stay the night in E’burg. There wasn’t a lot to tell them yet. But they didn’t want to wait.
Once in her office, Stanley Hunter, a lean, sharp-faced man wearing work boots, jeans, and a western shirt, and his wife, Rosemarie, a rail-thin woman in a print dress, who had trouble sitting still, sat across from Bet with expectant expressions. The teenage girl, an awkward blending of her father’s sharp features and her mother’s anxiety, went immediately to Schweitzer on his dog bed and curled up with him.
“Be careful, Meredith,” her mother cautioned. “That’s an awfully big dog.”
Bet assured the grieving woman that Schweitzer was very gentle. Bet knew firsthand how comforting a dog could be, and the girl looked like she could use it.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Bet said. “I know how hard it must have been to see your daughter like that.”
“It was,” Stanley said. “We just want to know what happened to our little girl.”
“The investigation is ongoing. I don’t have all the answers yet.”
“But you’ll catch the man who did this? Whoever shot my daughter in the back?” Stanley’s body looked relaxed, but Bet could hear the tension in his voice. Rosemarie muffled a sob.
Look past the grief when you’re dealing with a victim’s family. Bet remembered her father’s words before she observed him conduct an interview. They know more than they think they do, and it’s your job to find out what it is.
“It would be helpful for me if I could ask you a few questions,” Bet said.
“Anything we can do,” Stanley said.
“What can you tell me about your daughter’s relationship to Seeley Lander?”
“Seeley is her boyfriend,” Rosemarie answered.
“No, he’s not,” Meredith said from her spot on the floor.
“He is, Meredith. They’ve been dating since high school.” Rosemarie’s fingers worked the handles of the purse she balanced on her lap.
“They broke up.” Meredith tucked her face into Schweitzer’s neck, making it impossible to read her expression.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Rosemarie’s eyes darted between the sheriff and the giant dog.
“Perfectly safe.”
“Don’t argue with your mother,” Stanley said to Meredith.
“I’m not arguing, Dad. I just know they broke up.” Meredith turned to her father with a look of defiance, eyes bright with a film of tears that didn’t fall.
Stanley’s tone grew sharp. “Meredith, don’t interrupt the adults.”
Meredith curled herself around Schweitzer again.
“Mrs. Hunter? Is it possible Emma and Seeley broke up, but you didn’t know about it?”
Rosemarie looked back and forth between her husband and her daughter. Finally she crumpled. “I’m not sure. Maybe. We haven’t seen as much of her since she started college.”
Rosemarie began to cry in earnest, and Bet handed her a box of tissues. Out of the corner of her eye, Bet saw Meredith watching her mother with a look of irritation on her face.
Interesting family dynamic.
“How did they get to know each other in high school?” Bet asked. “Didn’t Seeley live in Jaxon? And you live in Spokane?”
Rosemarie regained her composure. “We only moved to Spokane a year ago.”
“Had you ever been here before? To Collier?”
The two adults looked at each other, unspoken communication passing between them.
“Go on and tell her, Dad.”
“Tell me what, Meredith?” Bet looked at the girl, her face still hidden.
“Nothing that matters now,” Stanley said, his voice a warning to Meredith.
“Let me be the judge of that,” Bet said, still looking at the girl. She seemed the most likely to talk.
“My big brother started doing drugs.”
Stanley and Rosemarie both looked away, not just from Bet but also from each other.
“We were here once before,” Meredith said. “When they sent my brother to that farm.”
“You mean Pearson’s Ranch?” Bet asked.
“Our son straightened out after that.” Rosemarie still avoided her husband’s eyes.
“How long ago did he come here?” Bet asked.
“Six years. He graduated from college back east a year ago. He’s working a good job now, out there.” Rosemarie glanced at her husband then, but he didn’t look her way. Bet wondered what it said that the boy had moved so far from home.
This could be the connection to her father, though. The brother might have talked about Collier and he would likely have met Earle, who had volunteered with Pearson just like Bet did now.
“They went to the same high school,” Stanley said, and it took Bet a moment to realize he meant Emma and Seeley. “Did that boy have anything to do with this? Is he why she was here?”
“We aren’t sure of anything right now. Seeley was also injured.”
Bet watched Meredith’s face finally show a true emotion: fear. She thought she knew why the girl was so sure Emma and Seeley had split up.
“But they’re still friends?” Bet asked the teenager. Parents often knew little about the private lives of their children, even before they left home.
“Yeah,” Meredith said, her voice catching as she finally started to shed the tears Bet saw in her eyes.
Tears for her sister? Or Seeley?
Bet handed Meredith a tissue too, but decided to let that go for the moment. “Does the name Katie mean anything to you?”
Both Stanley and Rosemarie shook their heads. The look on Meredith’s face telegraphed that she again knew more than her parents did. Bet asked a few more questions but learned nothing helpful. Before they wrapped up, Bet explained that she preferred to have their daughter’s death remain confidential.
“Aren’t you putting other young women in danger by not advertising a killer is out there?” Stanley asked. Bet hoped he didn’t get a call from Jamie Garcia, who would be all too eager to let the Hunters talk.
“We don’t believe this was a random killing.”
“This was someone my daughter knew?” Rosemarie spoke through her tears.
“We believe your daughter was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I will tell you more when I can, but for now, no, I don’t believe the community is in any danger.”
The Hunters agreed not to divulge the cause of their daughter’s death on social media or to the press.
“We want to go to where her body was found,” Stanley said, not noticing his wife wince when he said the words her body.
“It’s going to be dark.”
“We still need to go,” Stanley said. Bet looked to Rosemarie, who was shaking with silent tears. Stanley reached out and put a steadying hand on his wife’s shoulder. She leaned into him and took a deep breath, her body becoming still for the first time since they’d entered her office. She looked at Bet with pleading eyes.
“I have flowers for her. She should get that at least, right? Flowers to mark the spot?”
“Absolutely, Mrs. Hunter. We can do that for Emma.” Bet stood up to lead them out to the lake.
Schweitzer followed, ready to go along for the ride, and Bet saw an opportunity to get Meredith alone.
“Maybe Meredith would like to ride with me and Schweitzer over to the lake? She seems to have made a friend.”
“Can I, Mom?” the girl pleaded, never taking her arm off the dog. “He’s so cool. He makes me feel better.”
Mrs. Hunter looked to her husband, who nodded. “That would be fine, Meredith,” Rosemarie said.
Todd stood waiting near Alma’s desk when the four walked out of Bet’s office.
“I didn’t want to intrude,” Todd said, with a gesture toward the Hunters as they went out the front door.
“This is Meredith,” Bet said, introducing the girl to Todd. “Todd is helping us find who hurt your sister.”
“You mean killed her,” Meredith said, her voice husky from crying.
“You’re right, Meredith. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Lots of people think I’m just a dumb kid.”
Bet started to speak again, but Todd beat her to it, soothing the young girl.
“Well, I, for one, think you are a very brave young woman,” Todd said, surprising Bet with his gentle tone. “I think Schweitzer weighs more than you do, and here you are, not scared of him a bit.”
“I wish we could have a dog like this,” she said, her mind taken off her sister and the injured Seeley. “I’d take good care of a dog, but Dad doesn’t think I’m responsible enough.”
“I think you’d do just fine. I know you’re going to have a dog of your own one day.”
Bet smiled to Todd in thanks. “We’re going to go over to the lake,” she explained as she started out the front door with Meredith and Schweitzer behind her.
“I’ll leave any information I find on your desk,” Todd said. Bet thanked him, and she and Meredith left.
After getting Meredith and Schweitzer loaded into her SUV, which Bet and Alma had rescued earlier from the Ingalls Creek parking lot, Bet slid into the driver’s seat and pulled out onto the road with the Hunters behind her. Alone with the girl, Bet brought their conversation back to Seeley.
“So you and Seeley are close?” Bet asked.
The girl nodded, tears in her eyes again. “Is he gonna die too?”
“He survived his surgery. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. Is he your boyfriend now?” Bet asked.
“Well … not exactly.”
“But you’d like him to be?”
“Emma is a dork. She doesn’t know what an awesome guy Seeley is. Not like I do.”
Bet looked over at the girl, who seemed much younger than sixteen. Her anxious face looked out the window at the silhouettes of the granite cliffs lining the road. She appeared more concerned about the injured Seeley than her dead sister, whom she still spoke of in present tense. Grief, however, did funny things, and Bet knew she had yet to take in the reality of what had happened to Emma.
“Who is Katie?”
“Not who, what.”
“I don’t understand,” Bet said.
“KD. It’s not a who, it’s a what. Killer diary.”
“A killer’s diary?”
“No, killer, like as in cool.”
“Whose diary are we talking about?”
“Seeley’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, the man Seeley’s named after. Don’t you think that’s like the best name ever? Seeley?” The girl clearly enjoyed saying the name. “Seeley let me see it once. The diary, I mean.”
“KD is a book?”
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s full of all kinds of stuff Seeley’s great-whatever-grandfather knew. About this place, I guess. And some old mine.”
“What about the old mine?”
“Seeley—the old one, that is—helped the owner kill a bunch of people.”
“What do you mean, kill a bunch of people?”
“That’s why Seeley called it that. It’s a—whatchamacallit—a play on words. Killer, like as in awesome, but it’s also about people getting killed. Killer diary. But that was like a million years ago, right?”
“The diary talked about the explosion at the mine?”
“Yep.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“Not really.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No. Well, except about the gold, but you already know about that, right?”